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  3. Settlers of the Plains also had to contend with social isolation. The European pattern, whereby farmers lived together in a vill

Settlers of the Plains also had to contend with social isolation. The European pattern, whereby farmers lived together in a vill

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问题     Settlers of the Plains also had to contend with social isolation. The European pattern, whereby farmers lived together in a village and traveled each day to their nearby fields, was rare in the American West. Instead, various peculiarities of land division compelled the rural dwellers to live apart from each other. The Homestead Act of 1862 and other measures adopted to facilitate western settlement offered free or cheap plots to people who would live on and improve their property. Because most homesteads and other plots acquired by small farmers were rectangular — usually encompassing 160 acres — at most four families could live near each other, but only if they congregated around the same four-corner boundary intersection. In practice, farmers usually lived back from their boundary lines, and at least a half-mile separated farmhouses. Often adjacent land was unoccupied, making neighbors even more distant.
    Many observers wrote about the loneliness and monotony of life on the Plains. Men escaped the oppressiveness by working outdoors and taking occasional trips to sell crops or buy supplies. But women were more isolated, confined by domestic chores to the household, where, as one writer remarked, they were "not much better than slaves. It is a weary, monotonous round of cooking and washing and mending and as a result the insane asylum is 1/3 filled with wives of farmers."
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答案 西部平原的定居者不得不对付与社会隔绝的状态。农民们聚居在一个村子里，每天走到附近田里劳动的欧洲模式在美国西部很少见。而各种奇特的土地划分迫使农村居民相互分散居住。1862年的田产法案和为推动西部殖民采取的其他措施，为要住在自己的田产上发展的人们提供了免费或廉价的小块土地。因为小型农户们获得的大部分田产和其他小块土地是长方形的——一般占地160英亩——最多有四个家庭毗邻而居，不过，只有当他们都集中在四角边界的同一个交汇处时，上述情况才能发生。事实上，农民们通常住在离开边界线的地方，农房与农房之间至少相隔半英里。相邻的土地上时常无人居住，使邻里间更加疏远。 许多观察家写文章描述西部平原生活的单调与孤独。男人通过在户外工作和偶尔旅行去卖粮或买补给品来逃避这种生活的压抑。但是妇女们因家务缠身、足不出户而更加与世隔绝，因而有作者评论说，“她们比奴隶好不到哪儿去，没完没了地从事着做饭、洗衣、缝缝补补这些沉闷单调的家务劳动。结果，精神病院三分之一的病人都是农夫的妻子。”
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